Brussels, 04/02/2003 (Agence Europe) - At the initiative of Pascal Lamy, the European Commission is to present, on Wednesday, the initial offers that it is proposing to submit, before 31 March, to the Union's trading partners in the context of negotiations on the "services" chapter of the Doha Development Agenda.
The responses that it suggests bringing to the requests for access to European markets put forward by the other members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) at the beginning of last summer, imply that the Union would be willing to agree to greater - albeit "partial" - opening of its market to foreign service providers for which it is particularly competitive abroad, including banking and financial services, IT, insurance, advisory services, transport, etc. The Union would, however, not go any further with regards audiovisual and education, two highly sensitive sectors for French-speaking countries such as France, Belgium and Canada, whereas others, like the United States and Brazil, want to allow their exporters - who are highly competitive and productive - to conquer new markets. The Commission, which has still to receive the Council of Ministers' "green light", is expected to finally choose to keep the statu quo from the previous Uruguay Round. Europeans would thus decide not to take the commitment to open up for audiovisual and education services in 2005, as they did ten years earlier.